As soon as he had bored one hole he put a nail into it, and drove it almost through, but not quite through, as he said it might prove that he should wish to alter it. He then went to the other end of the same cross-bar, bored a hole there, and put a nail in, driving it as far as he had driven the first one. This was the topmost cross-bar of the ladder, and it was held securely in its place by the two nails. Stuyvesant then took the bottom cross-bar and secured that in the same way. Then he put on the other bars one at a time, until his ladder was complete in form, only the cross-bars were not yet fully nailed. He and Phonny looked at it carefully, to see if all was right, and Stuyvesant, taking it up from the floor, placed it against the wall of the shop.
“Let me climb up on it,” said Phonny.
“Not now,” said Stuyvesant,—“wait till it is finished.”
Stuyvesant then proceeded to drive the nails home, and clinch them. The clinching was done, by putting an axe under the part of the ladder where a nail was coming through, and then driving. The point of the nail when it reached the axe, was deflected and turned, and bending round entered the wood again, on the back side, and so clinched the nail firmly. Thus the other holes were bored, and the other nails put in, and at length the ladder was completed.
Just as the boys were ready to carry it out, the door opened, and Beechnut came in.
Beechnut looked round at all that the boys had been doing, with great interest. He examined the ladder particularly, and said that it was made in a very workmanlike manner. Phonny showed Beechnut his cage too, though he said that he had pretty much concluded not to finish it that afternoon.
“I don’t see why you need finish it at all,” said Beechnut. “You have got a very good cage already for your squirrel.”
“What cage?” asked Phonny.
“This shop. It is a great deal better cage for him than that box,—I think, and I have no doubt that he thinks so too.”